Conventional residential and commercial oven appliances generally include a cabinet that includes a cooking chamber for receipt of food items for cooking. Multiple heating elements are positioned within the cooking chamber to provide heat to food items located therein. The heating elements can include, for example, radiant heating elements, such as a bake heating assembly positioned at a bottom of the cooking chamber and/or a separate broiler heating assembly positioned at a top of the cooking chamber.
Notably, it is desirable to provide a camera for generating images of food during a cooking process, e.g., to monitoring cooking progress. However, conventional cameras are positioned outside of the cooking chamber to ensure a safe operating temperature. Thus, cameras view the cooking chamber through one or more layers of glass. Light from inside or outside of the cooking chamber may reflect off this glass and result in reduced image quality, particularly when the glass is coated with materials to reflect infrared radiation.
Accordingly, an oven appliance that includes an improved camera assembly would be useful. More particularly, an oven appliance with a camera assembly that provides improved image quality with no interference from undesirably reflected light would be particularly beneficial.